Honoring the memory of a special person
This week marks the ninth anniversary of the loss of our oldest grandson, Zack Wansley. And, yes, it hurts as much today as on the day he collapsed and died while training for a marathon.
Zack was special. He was a true scholarathlete. He was president of just about every significant organization in his high school.
He won the Journal Cup as his school’s Outstanding Senior. Zack was proof that one could get a quality public school education if willing to work for it. He is one reason that I am so hawkish on public education and remain intractable regarding those politicians who would rather cut-and-run from what ails our public schools rather than try to fix the problems. DICK YARBROUGH I saw what Zack accomplished in the classroom and know it can be done.
Zack was also an unrepentant and unapologetic Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket in a family of Georgia Bulldogs.
As this week approached, I asked myself how could I best honor his memory. I could wallow in self-pity or I could try to do something that would please the dickens out of him; something upbeat and more in keeping with his sunny personality.
So, I thought what if his grandfather, himself an unrepentant and unapologetic Georgia Bulldog, invited a couple of Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets to his home to talk about Zack and about his beloved school? Talk about the ultimate sacrifice. I felt Zack would be impressed that his grandfather loved him so much that he would endure a couple of hours of listening to Tech talk. Greater love hath no grandfather.
Guy Arledge was a colleague of mine at BellSouth and a 1971 graduate of Georgia Tech. One of his claims to fame — other than surviving my mercurial management style — was the creation and construction of a toy model of the Ramblin’ Wreck automobile and giving the idea to the Alumni Association, which hadn’t thought of it but has since sold tens of thousands of the replicas. Staff graphic
Of the readers who responded to our most recent poll about voting for the new ELOST, 59 percent of readers voted that No, they will not vote for the ELOST, while 41 percent voted Yes, they will vote for the new ELOST. Poll results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.
Rep. Bert Reeves, a 2000 graduate of Georgia Tech, is an attorney and a secondterm member of the Legislature, representing the Marietta area. I got to know him after his herculean effort to update Georgia’s arcane adoption laws only to see his good works high-jacked at the last minute by opponents of same-sex marriages.
In our conversations, I was impressed with his knowledge and passion for the subject and his commitment to improve our state’s adoption processes. I found him a serious and buttoned-downed young man who gives politics a good name.
What I didn’t know is there was another Bert Reeves. This one went by the name of Buzz, the Georgia Tech mascot, and he was anything but serious and button-downed.
He regaled us with stories about his experiences as Buzz, some of which can’t be repeated (except when he totally — and accidentally — disrupted a live ESPN pregame show and when he cold-cocked another team’s mascot at halftime, a Yankee who had referred to him as Forrest Gump).